


read the right books (to interpret your looks)

by nebulia



Series: you've changed some (water runs from the snow) [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Claude is still a slightly unreliable narrator, Emotional Trust Kink, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Timestamp, Touch-Starved, but it's pretty optimistic!, claude's crush can be seen from space, life-changing library anal, the sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulia/pseuds/nebulia
Summary: [This isn’t a good idea, Claude thinks. It's been five years. They both leave Derdriu tomorrow: Dimitri to war, Claude to a throne of his own. But Claude wants it. It’s been so long since he’s let himself have something he wanted--not something that wasn’t aligned with his goals, but something he just...wanted, simply, the way he wants the warmth of Dimitri’s hands, the intensity of his gaze.“If I were to have you now,” Claude says, quiet and sure, “It would be so much better than it was then.”Dimitri sputters, going red, and Claude can’t help but laugh at him a little. He almost thinks that the breath of a moment, that Dimitri will pull his hand back and reach for his glove and blushingly stutter his way through an excuse for his impropriety. But then Dimitri swallows, and sets his jaw, and says, “Is that a promise, Claude?”]
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Series: you've changed some (water runs from the snow) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998010
Comments: 20
Kudos: 117





	read the right books (to interpret your looks)

**Author's Note:**

> While i think you probably will get by without reading [the first fic in the series,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27356956) this fic does reference the events of it. if you haven't read it: Claude and Dimitri bang the night before the Blue Lions go to the Holy Tomb, and everything proceeds to go to shit as in canon. 
> 
> Timestamp is at the end of Azure Moon chapter 19 (The Golden Deer's Plea), 2 Blue Sea Moon 1186. 
> 
> minor content warnings in the end notes, but shouldn't be too out of line with Azure Moon canon.
> 
> much thanks to seabee for endless, endless cheerleading and the quick readthrough to make sure everything was in order. she's my hero and any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

In Claude's defense, he isn't _rude_ ; he doesn't just dump a country and a Hero’s Relic in Dimitri and Teach’s lap and leave for Almyra. He’s a gracious host, settling the army in an unplanted field outside Derdriu and the officers in the Riegan palace on the shoreline cliffs, making sure they’re in rooms with a view of the blue-green ocean. And anyway, the siege of Derdriu is over, after almost two months. They never wanted for food, since the port wasn’t blockaded, but the city outside the inner walls was evacuated, and quarters were tight and tense. People are celebrating in the streets, and Claude has _never_ turned down the opportunity to plan a feast. This one’s short notice--he does give everyone a day, but no one begrudges him, not when it’s celebrating both a major victory for the Alliance as well as the Faerghan army, the heroes of the hour. 

It’s a good thing, the banquet, for more reasons than one. Planning it is a pleasant, distracting exercise, a low-stakes adrenaline rush as Claude rushes around making sure everything is arranged. He enjoys it, even the stress, and his buoyant mood is contagious; even the makers of the marchpane conceits and subtleties, asked to do a prodigious amount of work, smile back when he thanks them for their difficult labor. It distracts him from thinking of his imminent departure to Almyra, of the secrets he still keeps, and of Dimitri. 

Of the last time Dimitri had smiled at him, five years ago. Of the way Dimitri looks now--taller, broader, more weary, less fragile. Still haunted, but not as consumed. Claude powers through the planning and the banquet itself on adrenaline and distraction, courteous to Dimitri but trying to be no more friendly than he is to anyone else, and though he enjoys playing host, he’s grateful when it’s done. He retires almost immediately to his safe haven, the Riegan library, with its overstuffed chair-and-a-half near the fireplace, still necessary at night with the cool northern sea-breeze, his portable desk with its little hidden compartments and complications nearby so he can work and nap in equal measure. 

Dimitri cut an imposing figure now in a way he hadn’t when he’d been a golden prince. Even out of his armor, he dressed in dark colors, favoring black, though at dinner his fine leather gloves--not gauntlets--had been dyed blue, the backs of each hand embroidered with the Blaiddyd crest. Without his armor and cloak, he was narrower than Claude expected, rangy in a broad-shouldered frame, but his height was intimidating now instead of mildly irritating, and when he wasn’t holding delicate china, he moved with a surprisingly quiet grace. With his single eye and and his choppy hair, he looked more like a feral, packless lion than he ever had, although Claude was pleased to see the Blue Lions had rallied around him, as always. He would have a pack, when he was ready to accept it. It made Claude feel better about leaving Dimitri the whole continent. He and Teach will make a formidable team. 

He was still almost handsome. Not the same sort of handsome that Claude had bent over a table in the library and fucked nearly dumb, but the changes in his face--the eye patch, the crooked nose, the intensity of his gaze--made him striking. With his hair pulled back to reveal the sharpness of his cheekbones and jaw, he was still as breathtaking as he’d been, just in a new way. Claude didn’t know why he thought he wouldn’t find Dimitri handsome now. 

He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, leaning his head back against the back of his chair. 

The library door opens. “Th-this is it, sir,” a serving-boy says, and Claude hears Dimitri say, “Thank you,” low and sincere, the jangle of a coin-purse.

Oh, _hell._

The door clicks shut, and Claude stands up noisily, making his presence known before bowing slightly. “Old habits die hard, huh, your Kingliness?” 

Dimitri turns pink. “Claude!” He’s dressed down, still in all black, even his thin silk gloves. But his shirt is a filmy linen, light for sleeping or casual work, and his sideless surcoat has a low neck that reveals the high collar of the shirt, which itself bares a sliver of Dimitri’s throat at the front. It is more of Dimitri’s skin than Claude thinks he’s ever seen. “It’s not so much an old habit as I’ve...never had other habits, really.” His smile is an attempt to be rueful, but comes out tight instead. 

Claude ignores the tightness, offering Dimitri a rueful smile of his own. “Well, _I’ve_ been retreating here for about five years now like it was Garreg Mach.” He glances at the fire, his preferred chair and portable desk, the chained books in their caged shelves, the high table he’s used as a primary desk still strewn with unnecessary papers. When he first came here, he missed the library at the palace in Zagros painfully. Now, he’s going to miss this room until he aches. As happy as he is to go to a place he still calls home, leaving Derdriu will leave a hollow space inside his ribcage. 

“Going to miss it?” Dimitri says, careful. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Claude says. The topic has been so cautious, so strange. It’s a comfort for Dimitri to ask, sincere even knowing that he doesn’t know the secret. “I will.” He grins at him. “Not going to ask me where I’m going?”

“Would I get an answer?” Dimitri replies, halfway to fed up with Claude already.

“No,” Claude says cheerfully. 

In truth, part of him would love to tell Dimitri, and he isn’t keeping the secret just to surprise him. Claude’s existence as the heir to the Almyran throne is a strategic secret, one that has saved both his siblings and him from assassination. If no one knows who the heir is, then the heir can’t be killed. Now that he’s returning to Almyra, flying only with Judith and a pegasus battalion until he meets Nader at the Locket, keeping that secret throughout Fódlan is crucial for his safety. Not that he thinks Dimitri wants to assassinate him, but--one word to a spymaster, and one well-placed arrow, and he’s toast whether Dimitri wants him killed or not. And even if the government doesn’t want him dead, plenty of people in the Alliance still hate Almyra. If word got out at all--if Dimitri were to tell _anyone--_

Claude’s practical at heart, and he wants to live. 

“It’s really that important to you?” Dimitri says. “That you’d leave your Relic to me? A _country_ to me? To _me_?” 

“You’re going to be a good king,” Claude says, with no room for uncertainty. “And yes, it is.”

Dimitri sighs. “If you insist, then.”

“I do,” Claude says, as earnestly as he can manage. “I _must_. Here, let me pull up a chair.” 

He drags up another chair-and-a-half next to his own at the fire. “Sit down,” he says, and when he sees Dimitri’s face, he adds, “Dimitri.” 

Dimitri turns pink again--he still blushes easy as pie, no matter how imposing he is--but rewards Claude with a small, pleased smile. “Thank you, Claude,” he says. 

It’s late--the Nocturns bells have already rung--but they talk for a long time. About the war, about Gronder, about all the difficult things that Claude thought Dimitri might be scared to talk about, about a few things Claude thought he himself might be scared to talk about. But Dimitri’s relatively open about the last few months, though he admits openly there are bits he doesn’t remember. He’s not fully well, which contradicted the reports Claude received--he’s still worn out, a dark smudge under his good eye, his cheekbones not just sharp but gaunt, his eye bloodshot. Sometimes his gaze tracks something Claude doesn’t see, and sometimes he trails off into nothing, before launching into an entirely new sentence. He’s certainly not returned to something he was before, but Claude hadn’t expected his spies to be accurate on that matter. But he’s remarkably open and friendly, smiling his familiar slight smile at Claude often, his chuckles rare and precious, and the weight of nostalgia lies heavy on Claude’s shoulders. 

In a way, Claude’s carried Dimitri with him for five years. That night--it was the night before the ritual in the Holy Tomb, when the Blue Lions came back and Dimitri had been shattered. He’d spent the majority of five years thinking it was the last time Dimitri, who often smiled but almost never laughed, had laughed for joy. That maybe Claude had been the last person who had, in any way, made Dimitri happy, and if he wasn’t, it was damn close. 

Dimitri’s smiles had become rarer as he and their school year had crumbled, his laughter nonexistent, but that last night he reminded Claude of the boy who had pushed open the library door after midnight, cheeks rosy from a fresh bath, glowing, way back in Harpstring Moon, the boy who had debated classwork and strategy with Claude during the latest canon hours when everyone else was asleep. Not at first, when he’d shown up grim, but after. _I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but right now I don’t want to care._ And Claude knew exactly how he felt. 

And then it _had_ happened, and the world as they knew it had crumpled, and then they were all at war, and Claude heard about the coup, the fall of Fhirdiad, the execution, and when he thought of Dimitri, all he could think about was that boy, the last of Dimitri’s contentment, sprawled out on the floor of the library, pants a mess with his own spend, laughing at Claude trying to find something to wipe them up with that wasn’t his own capelet, laughing at Claude’s own persistent curiosity, laughing--gently, with great fondness--at Claude.

Goddess. What a mess it had been. Claude couldn’t regret it if he tried. Not when Dimitri was dead, and certainly not now, when Dimitri sits next to him, somehow more settled than he’d ever been at school despite the way he’s literally missing parts of himself. 

“You look well,” Dimitri says, surprising him. “Though you cut your braid.” He twists a lock of his own hair near his face. 

It was childish of him to keep it as long as he did in Fódlan. Something he could get away with at the Academy at seventeen was not something he could get away with as the Duke of Riegan. He looks forward to growing it back out again in Almyra. 

“I did cut it,” Claude says, and doesn’t elaborate. “I grew a beard, too.” That, he’ll keep. 

“I noticed,” Dimitri says, dryly. 

“Thank you,” Claude says, and preens. He’s been lucky. Derdriu was safe until Volkhard laid siege to it two months ago. They were at war, but unless Claude was on campaign he ate well and slept safely. Life hadn’t changed the way it had in the northeastern Empire, or the Oghmas, or Faerghus. He certainly hadn’t been living as hard as Dimitri allegedly had. “You look well, too,” Claude says. 

It’s not just a platitude. Dimitri looks a little tired, a little worn out, but he also looks like he’s eating and sleeping at least some. His hair is still pulled back from the banquet, and while he still looks a little underfed, he’s not skin and bones. He looks better than Claude’s intelligence had reported. 

Dimitri shakes his head. “No need to flatter me, Claude.” 

“I’m not,” Claude says earnestly. “I don’t know if you noticed, but you’re missing an eye.” Dimitri’s bark of surprised laughter is harsh but genuine, and Claude grins. “But you also look like--like you’re taking care of yourself, more than you ever did at the Academy.” 

Dimitri looks at him for a long moment before he sighs. “I’m trying to,” he says. “I have help.” 

Claude can only imagine. The Blue Lions have always been protective of Dimitri, and if he’s letting them protect him from his own tendencies to neglect his wellbeing, they’re almost certainly absurdly devoted to the task. “Dedue is making you take care of yourself, then?”

Dimitri huffs. “He told the professor that I was ‘liable to do something rash when no one was looking.’” 

“Was he wrong?” Claude says. 

“Well, no, but they were standing a meter from me at the time.” Claude laughs at Dimitri’s consternation. “I think he’s recruited most everyone, honestly. I haven’t had the chance to ‘do something rash’ in a while.” He leans back in the chair, a faint, fond smile crossing his mouth. “Felix kicked me out of the training grounds a week ago. Said I was fighting sloppy and needed to sleep.” 

Claude leans in. “Even Felix?”

“ _Especially_ Felix,” Dimitri says. “He’d have done it without Dedue asking. Like Dedue, he knows me well.” He smiles again, more bitter. “He’s always known me a little too well.” 

Claude thinks about Felix at the Academy, all that anger coiled inside him, convinced Dimitri was little more than a vicious killer. Convinced Dimitri was faking his sincerity, his goodie-two shoes behavior, his fawning over Byleth, his kindness. 

“The golden prince was a mask, even then,” Claude says. “You wore it deliberately, and Felix knew.” 

Dimitri blinks at him. “Yes,” he says. “I was--it was mostly a front. The Academy was, I thought, my best bet for gathering information for vengeance. My family--” He swallows. “I wanted blood, and Felix knew it. He saw a monster in me.”

“And now?”

“I still want it,” Dimitri says. His eye narrows as he turns back to the fire. “Or my--part of me does.” There’s something he’s chosen to not tell Claude, but Claude doesn’t press. But I’m.” He closes his eyes and sighs gustily. “I’m alive, and I have a duty to the living as much as I do the dead. To Faerghus, to the Alliance now, and to you, and the professor, and my friends.” He glances back at Claude. “I’m surprised you noticed. Many people think I’ve returned to a way I used to be. Other than Felix, who is--complicated--I think only Dedue thought otherwise.”

“What does Dedue think?” Claude says.

“He knows that who I was at the Academy was a veneer,” Dimitri says. “He was the only person who really saw what was beneath, and it’s always been the same, maybe up until Gronder, maybe not. That I’ve always been what I am.” 

“Are you?” Not a monster, necessarily--Claude doesn’t think Dimitri is a monster any more than the rest of them. War makes monsters of even the best-intentioned of people. But he wants to know what Dimitri thinks he himself is.

Dimitri’s gaze meets his, that single blue eye piercing. “Are _you_?” he says. 

It hits closer to home than Dimitri knows. Is Claude the same person he was when he left Almyra at sixteen? He barely even thinks of himself with the same _name_ anymore, after being called Claude for nearly a third of his life, after _being_ Claude. And no one walks away from war the same as they were when they went in. When he goes back to Almyra, he won’t be his old self again. Khalid again, but not a return to who he was when he left. Something new. Maybe not a different person, but shaped differently. 

It’s not quite the same as Dimitri, but Claude can see what Dedue means. What Dimitri is getting at. 

“Point taken,” Claude says. “But you’re deflecting, and I feel obligated to call you out on it.”

Dimitri barks a short, harsh laugh. “You’re like a dog with a bone,” he says. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Claude. Or who I was, for that matter. Right now, I only know what I have to do next. And now... my--the ghosts that haunt me, the people who follow me, the professor--we’re finally all in agreement.”

“Enbarr,” Claude says.

Dimitri nods, and while there’s something wild in his eye, there’s something sad to the tilt of his mouth. “Enbarr,” he agrees. He looks up at Claude, swallows, and then looks back at the fire.

Claude swallows too. He doesn't want to bring down Dimitri’s relatively good mood, or his own. It’s easy to remember Edelgard herself as she was in school, forgetting that she put a sadistic mage in charge of an annexed state and left Faerghus to the most bloodthirsty of her Imperial troops while turning her armies and spies to splitting the Alliance, confident in her ability to feed Adrestia as long as Gronder’s fields remained unburnt, less interested in what would be left for Leicester. It’s easier to remember Edelgard as the girl she was than it is Dimitri, because he watched Dimitri come back from the Holy Tomb broken like a pitcher and now he sees his pieces glued back together, worse for the wear but still holding water, no leaks to be found. “Well, for what it’s worth, I like you as you are better than how you were in the Academy. It’s good to see golden folks aren’t as clean as we plebians tend to think they are. We were all blinded by your radiance back in school.”

Dimitri takes the out and sighs, something exasperated and familiar. His eyeroll is so exaggerated Claude feels delightedly seventeen again. “Claude, just because the Alliance doesn’t have a formal king doesn't mean you’re not royalty in everything but name. Because until you abdicated yesterday, you were.” Claude doesn’t react to that, because he’s a professional. Dimitri smiles faintly. “Technically, you’re in the Blaiddyd line of succession, too.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me, I saw that nightmare of a family tree in the library at Garreg Mach,” Claude groans. “If you unfold it it takes up four tables, did you know that?”

“I, too, have seen my own family tree,” Dimitri says dryly.

Claude laughs, this time partly at himself. “You blackguard! Edelgard and I always thought you were _so_ serious, but some of that was just a deadpan humor, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I missed it.”

“I also find Alois’ jokes very funny,” Dimitri says. “No one seems to believe me when I say that, though. Not even Alois, curiously.” 

“You are a man of hidden depths,” Claude says, and Dimitri’s face darkens. “Did I overstep?”

“No,” Dimitri says, troubled, and doesn’t elaborate. After a moment, he fidgets. “I’m sorry,” he says, as though he’s casting about for words. “I--” 

Claude backtracks and cuts him off. “Back in school, I thought the two of you royals were as obnoxious as it came at first.” He grins at Dimitri. “Turns out I was just as obnoxious. I can’t believe you didn’t punch me sometimes. I can’t believe _no one_ punched me.” 

“You were…” Dimitri pauses. “Gregarious,” he says finally.

“I was a terror,” Claude agrees with good cheer. “And so awkward.”

This makes Dimitri look at him in surprise. “You? Awkward?”

“I was so sure I was right all the time,” Claude says. “What a fool I was.”

Dimitri’s mouth quirks, and in the firelight Claude can see color rising up his jaw, in his ears. “I never thought that,” he says. “You always seemed so self-assured.”

“The best way to be self-assured is to fake it at all times,” Claude says, and Dimitri chokes on a breath of a laugh. Not the real, bubbly laughter Claude sometimes feels like he imagined, but good humor, at least. “Well, in school I sometimes thought I was confident. But I’ve learned I didn’t know much of anything, and what I knew I didn’t understand.” 

“Isn’t that how it is for all of us?” Dimitri says. “Sometimes I think...Edelgard and I--if we had only _spoken_ , truly, and shared what we both knew, then we wouldn’t be here. But I was so blinded by my own needs for vengeance and Edelgard was so...she was always committed to her ideals. I never looked past my own pain. I don’t know if she did, and discarded what she saw, or if she had tunnel vision of her own. I didn’t understand how the pain could be more than mine, not then. I hardly understand it now. But _you_ \--you were confident enough in yourself to listen to others.” 

Claude blinks at him. “Dimitri,” he says quietly, surprised, and a little touched. “I should have listened more, though.” 

“Everyone should have, probably,” Dimitri says. “Except maybe the professor.” 

“Teach should have talked more,” Claude says wryly. “But you’re right. Maybe that’s the curse of youth. Although it’s not as if we’re old.”

“I don’t know,” Dimitri says. “Sometimes I feel ancient. Like a crumbling statue.” 

Claude reaches out to touch Dimitri’s silk-covered hand. “You’re not,” he says. “I feel that way too, sometimes. I think war makes us feel like that. But we’re young men still, you and I, and we deserve to be young.” 

Dimitri looks at him, eye softening. “Claude,” he says. 

“We _do_ ,” Claude says, and pulls back his hand, not wanting to overstep again. But he doesn’t look away from Dimitri’s eye, and Dimitri stares back at him, his mouth almost smiling, his soft gaze as intense as ever. 

“Still,” Dimitri says finally. “You’ve always listened more, I think. Your position was more precarious than Edelgard’s or mine, and you knew it, and you paid more attention. And you--you were right sometimes,” he adds, almost shyly. “About some things.”

“Oh?” Claude says, though Dimitri’s reaction gives him away. There’s heat creeping up his own neck; he had hoped they would talk, and reality has exceeded his expectations; but he never thought Dimitri would manage to bring up how Claude fucked him over a table in the library the night before the world cracked. He figured it would remain unspoken between them; they’d part and go their separate ways and the next time they’d meet it’d be as kings, not as men. It would never be spoken of again, a strange memory of a time when the world was turned on its side.

“You knew I wanted--” Dimitri shuts his mouth so quickly it makes an audible sound. “You never presumed. When you knew, you knew, and you asked when you didn’t.”

They don’t look at each other. 

“I feel bad sometimes,” Claude says, rubbing his neck to hide his own flush. “It was awkward.” 

Dimitri picks at a stray thread on the chair. “I never thought that,” he says carefully, “I didn’t know any better, but….” His laugh is strained. “I thought _I_ was the awkward one.” 

“You?” Claude says, surprised. Dimitri was the one who turned his gloved hand over to link their fingers together. He’d moaned so sweetly, so fucking gorgeous he barely seemed human. Meanwhile Claude had panicked about using his cape to wipe up the mess they made. 

“I wouldn’t even take off my gloves, Claude. I barely _touched_ you.” He glances up at Claude, smiling ruefully, as though asking Claude to join in on the joke.

Dimitri’s not wearing anything like the heavy leather gloves or gauntlets he wore then, but fine black silk gloves, and Claude’s mouth moves before his brain does. “What about now?” he says, and Dimitri’s eye snaps to his. “Would you take your gloves off for me now?”

Dimitri sucks in a breath. Lets it out in a slow release. And then offers out his gloved hand, shaking slightly, across their armrests to Claude. 

Claude’s gaze doesn’t leave Dimitri’s. He holds Dimitri’s eye as he pulls the glove off, one finger at a time, until it flutters to the ground. 

Dimitri’s hand is scarred, old white burns layered under pink and red nicks and cuts, swollen around his nails from picking at torn cuticles, every knuckle knotty, almost every finger crooked, the nail of his index finger half-missing and yellowed. Still, there’s something lovely about them, pale from never seeing the sun even if they are still hard and calloused, something lovely about Dimitri revealing his vulnerable self to him, letting Claude peel off the layer he wears to protect himself from the world, thin though it may be. He holds Dimitri’s hand in both of his, links their fingers together. 

This isn’t a good idea, Claude thinks. It’s been five years. They both leave Derdriu tomorrow: Dimitri to war, Claude to a throne of his own. But Claude _wants_ it. It’s been so long since he’s let himself have something he wanted--not something that wasn’t aligned with his goals, but something he just...wanted, simply, the way he wants the warmth of Dimitri’s hands, the intensity of his gaze. 

“If I were to have you now,” Claude says, quiet and sure, “It would be so much better than it was then.”

Dimitri sputters, going red, and Claude can’t help but laugh at him a little. He almost thinks that the breath of a moment, that Dimitri will pull his hand back and reach for his glove and blushingly stutter his way through an excuse for his impropriety. But then Dimitri swallows, and sets his jaw, and says, “Is that a promise, Claude?” 

Claude’s out of his chair and straddling Dimitri almost before Dimitri’s finished saying his name. It’s a little ungraceful but Dimitri doesn’t care any more than Claude does, because his mouth opens under Claude’s with unguarded hunger, keening when Claude winds his hands in his hair and tugs. 

Dimitri’s still a little messy, clumsy with enthusiasm and what Claude presumes isn’t much more experience than he had five years ago, but Claude gentles the kiss until he’s not using so many teeth, holding the back of Dimitri’s head in his hands like a precious artifact. He can feel Dimitri’s thighs flex under his legs; his hands, tentative and feather-light, skimming across his back. The latter is enough to have him melting further into Dimitri--Dimitri’s _touching_ him, albeit with an absurd level of care, when the last time he was so afraid of his control snapping he’d refused to touch Claude almost entirely. 

Claude pulls away to press their foreheads together. “That’s not so bad, is it?” he says. He can feel Dimitri’s breath against his mouth. “You aren’t hugging me to death yet.” 

Dimitri’s hands grasp at Claude’s shirt for a moment before loosening again, smoothing up and down Claude’s back. “You’re optimistic,” he says, and Claude laughs. 

“Always have been,” he says, and leans down to kiss Dimitri again, sweet and lingering, catching Dimitri’s lower lip between his teeth before Dimitri’s tongue is in his mouth, searching, exploring, a little sloppy but not rough. His hands clench in the layers of Claude’s vest and shawl, tugging in a way that suggests he’s crumpling them terribly, and Claude just laughs into his mouth, giddy with Dimitri below him, kissing him, wanting him, _touching_ him. He pulls away and drops a kiss on Dimitri’s sharp jaw just because he can. “Have you kissed anyone since--” _the library_ _at Garreg Mach_ , but Dimitri’s already shaking his head. Claude’s not surprised, but he wanted to make sure. 

“I never--” he begins, and looks away from Claude, as though ashamed. “I didn’t--no one wanted--and I didn’t want--” His ears are red, but with shame and not embarrassment. 

“Hey,” Claude says. “It’s been a rough five years.” Understatement. “I’m not judging you.” He nuzzles his nose against Dimitri’s, meets his eye. “You had a lot on your hands.” Major understatement, if Claude’s put everything together right, and he’s sure he has. “You’re here now, and that’s all that matters to me.” 

Dimitri swallows. “Claude,” he says, and pulls one hand away from wrinkling Claude’s filmy silk shoulder shawl to touch his face. “You’re too kind.” 

“I’m not kind at all,” Claude says, shifting with discomfort. He has to keep his reputation intact. 

Dimitri’s brow wrinkles. “Are you not? You are very kind to me.” 

“You deserve it,” Claude says. “Most people don’t.”

Dimitri’s eye darkens, and his head drops. “Look at me,” Claude says, and tips Dimitri’s chin up. “I don’t care what you think. _I’ve_ decided you deserve my kindness, and that’s all that matters to me.” He smiles, baring his teeth. “See? I’m not kind at all.” 

Dimitri swallows again, and then says, “But you just said--”

Claude silences him with a kiss, determined to move past his own inability to accept a sincere compliment. “Shut up and let me kiss you,” he says. “I promised, remember?”

“So you did,” Dimitri says softly, and kisses Claude back. 

Claude lets Dimitri lead the kiss for a while--it’s careful, curious now that the initial boil has cooled to a simmer, and Claude explores in return, hands dropping down to Dimitri’s shoulders, his chest. Dimitri’s surcoat is light wool, but thick enough to be in the way, and Claude tugs at it and murmurs “Off?” against Dimitri’s mouth. 

Dimitri gulps but then he nods, and pulls away to help him get it off, leaving just the thin black linen shirt beneath. Dimitri’s still thin--Claude can feel his ribs, and the ropy lines of scars, but his broad shoulders and narrow waist are wiry with muscle, and he gasps into Claude’s mouth when Claude’s hands brush over a nipple. 

“You didn’t let me touch you last time,” Claude murmurs, and catches Dimitri’s still-gloved hand, pressing a kiss to the silk-covered palm. “I wanted to touch you so badly.” 

“I--” Dimitri shivers when Claude’s fingers slide over his knuckles before tugging at each fingertip to loosen the glove. “I couldn’t--I was so--” 

“Hey,” Claude says. “It’s fine. I’m touching you now, right?” He pulls the glove off with a quiet whisper of silk to reveal Dimitri’s other hand, with two blackened fingernails and similar scars and swollen knuckles. 

Dimitri glances down, at his shirt. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“What? Why?”

“I--my shirt--I’m sorry I can’t take it off.” Dimitri doesn’t lift his head. 

Dimitri _feels_ naked beneath him, even almost fully covered. His bare hands--Claude has never seen his hands before--the slit of the collar at his throat, the collar itself lower than what he usually wears, baring more of the old burn scars on his neck--Claude’s never seen so much of Dimitri’s skin. He’s never imagined he’d see so much of Dimitri’s skin, in any situation. It was unfathomable. And his shirt is so thin, summer linen, that despite its dark color he might as well be naked to Claude’s hands if not his eyes. Claude can feel Dimitri below him, the warmth of his skin, the scars on his body, the strength in his shoulders and chest. Can feel his _bare hands_ , and who has been able to say that about Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd? 

“Please,” Claude says. “You in one layer? With no gloves? You’re as good as naked. My sources say you wore your armor all the time at Garreg Mach for months, and you dress like it’s _still_ winter. It’s Blue Sea Moon, Dimitri.” 

Dimitri lets out a puff of air, still not looking at Claude. “I just wish I could--”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Claude says. “Not here. Not now. I’m not going to force you to do anything, and I don’t want to ask anything of you you don’t want to give.” He runs a hand down the line of Dimitri’s shoulder, firmly. “You’re warm,” he says, and leans in to press his lips to the crown of Dimitri’s downturned head. “You broke your collarbone--I can feel how it didn’t set quite right.” He runs his thumb across the bump in the bone and then drags it down to Dimitri’s nipple, and Dimitri gasps, head dropping back against the back of the chair, finally. “You like that.” You like being touched, he doesn’t say. He’s still wrinkling the back of Claude’s best silk vest and Claude really, really doesn’t care, and he doesn’t say that, either. He sits back to take off his shoulder shawl, undo the wide belt around his waist, dropping them to one side, and leans back in to drape his hands over Dimitri’s shoulders and press their foreheads together again. Dimitri smiled when they nuzzled noses, so he does that again too. “This is enough,” he says. “You’re enough, Dimitri.” 

Dimitri’s hands tighten in his clothing, and Claude leans into him. “You are too, Claude,” he says. “You know that, right?” 

Claude has to wonder sometimes. Leaving behind a whole duchy with no Crested heir, handing a country over to an ex-mercenary and, by all reports, a madman--though Claude trusts both implicitly--and going back to Almyra, a country where he’s not sure he’s even welcome anymore. Did he do enough here? Will he be enough there? He felt like he was certain yesterday, after beating Volkhard and his army, but the further away he is from handing over Failnaught, the further that certainty is, too. 

“Claude?” Dimitri says. 

“I’m sorry,” Claude says. “I’m--” He stops. There’s so much he can’t tell Dimitri. “I got lost in my thoughts.” 

“You’re enough for me,” Dimitri says. “I don’t know--” He makes a sour face. “I don’t know what schemes you have planned, but right now? You’re enough for me.”

Claude chuckles at his face, comforted by his words. “What sort of tactician would I be if I gave everything away?” he says, lifting his hands to cup Dimitri’s face.

“An honest one,” Dimitri replies, eye shining with good humor.

“Boring,” Claude says, and runs his thumb across Dimitri’s reddened lower lip. “Thank you.” 

“I should be thanking _you_ ,” Dimitri says, touching Claude’s face in turn. “May I kiss you, Claude?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Claude says, and Dimitri closes the distance between them to kiss him firmly, teeth catching on his lower lip, mouth hot and wet and slick and _good_. Claude kisses him back, sliding his hands back into his hair. Dimitri likes hands in his hair. He maybe knew that five years ago. He undoes the tie in Dimitri’s hair, careful to not touch the straps of his eye patch, and Dimitri’s hair falls around his face. Claude strokes it back, combing it, scraping his fingernails against Dimitri’s scalp. 

“Claude,” Dimitri breathes. His fingers loosen and his hands soften against Claude’s back, stroking. “You’re so--Goddess.” His hands slide down to Claude’s hips, pulling them closer, and he gasps when their cocks brush through the fabric of their clothes. Claude shifts a little so they’re pressed together, rocks down, and watches Dimitri’s golden eyelashes flutter. “Oh, _oh--_ ”

“Good?” Claude says, and Dimitri nods. “Here, come on--” he picks up a rhythm, moving against Dimitri, and Dimitri’s hands tighten on his hips, maybe hard enough to leave marks. Claude has to bite back a whimper at the sensation and the idea that Dimitri could leave bruises on him, that he could still have Dimitri’s hands on him at the Locket, back at the palace in Zagros. “Yes, like that, that’s-- _fuck_.” 

“Claude,” Dimitri says, eye enormous and nearly all black, “You’re _perfect.”_ He picks up Claude’s rhythm easily, moving against him, his hands urging Claude back against him. “You--” and then he seems to lose all sense of words for a moment, teeth sinking into his lower lip as he groans in the back of his throat. 

There’s levin sparking up Claude’s spine from the steady grind, from Dimitri’s mouth forming the word _perfect_ with kiss-bitten lips, from his hands sinking bruises into his hips, and he drops his forehead against Dimitri’s and leans in to press their mouths together, barely a kiss, as desperate as they both are. 

When he finally can tear his mouth away he backs up a little. Dimitri whines before Claude’s hands scrabble at his laces until they pull out his cock. Claude nearly drops on his knees to try and fit it into his mouth, but Dimitri’s reeling him back in with all of his not-insignificant strength, and so Claude goes, caught in the tide that is Dimitri, that is Dimitri’s magnetism, their hands tangled together between them, wrapped around Dimitri’s cock. 

Dimitri’s mouth is mashed against Claude’s cheekbone as he pants into his skin, humid and warm and slick with spit, and Claude moves to catch his lips as he jerks Dimitri slowly, hand pressed tight between them. Dimitri pulls his hand away to hold Claude’s ass, fingers sinking in, and Claude groans. They’re not quite kissing now, just breathing the same air, gasping into each other’s mouths, and Claude feels like he did five years ago, elated and dizzy with Dimitri, even a differently-shaped Dimitri--maybe _especially_ a differently-shaped Dimitri--in his arms. 

Claude might not have been at the epicenter of their world shattering, but he was hit by the shrapnel. He grieved Edelgard, and then he grieved Dimitri, and then he fought a war, multiple wars: not just the physical war the Empire waged against them, but the internal conflict between the Five Great Lords, the ensuing trade wars and sanctions within the Alliance. He’s come out the other side shaped differently, too; harder, colder, meaner. He drove harder bargains and got them, gave more favors than he owed. Neither of them are shaped the way they were then, before war and conspiracy tore them apart, but Dimitri still fits with Claude. Still nuzzles against Claude’s face, eyelashes brushing Claude’s cheek. Still says, “ _Please_ ,” in Claude’s ear, soft and uncertain. 

Claude wants to give him the world and ask for nothing in return; he has never had a more foolish notion. 

“There’s oil in my desk,” he gasps. “Hang on, I’ll--” He climbs off Dimitri and sheds his pants and vest and sash, horribly and endearingly wrinkled by Dimitri’s grasping fingers. He leaves his shirt on because it feels weird to be naked when Dimitri’s not, and also because it feels weird to be naked in the library, even though Claude’s the only person who ever is in the library this time of night. He rifles through the compartments of his portable desk until he grabs the vial of linseed oil and nearly throws himself back on Dimitri’s lap, his need to be touching Dimitri spurred by Dimitri’s own desperation. 

Dimitri pulls him into another kiss, hand fisting in the back of his shirt, and _this_ was what Claude wanted five years ago: Dimitri’s need, Dimitri touching him, Dimitri _unafraid_. And there’s no doubt that the tired man who flinched at nothing before he sat down in the chair Claude pulled up for him is still afraid of himself, but he trusts Claude more than he fears his own strength. He trusts Claude to be able to handle it, and Claude wanted that, wanted it for Dimitri and, selfishly, wanted it for himself, wanted to be trusted by Dimitri--by _anyone_ \--so implicitly.

Claude rocks into Dimitri, gasping in his mouth, nearly forgetting about the oil clenched in his fist for the sweet friction of Dimitri’s cock against his own, the soft slubbiness of his shirt, Dimitri’s hands on his back, holding him tight. His cockhead is wet with his own precome, catching on the fabric between them, sliding against Dimitri’s. He pulls back from the kiss so he can reach in between them to wrap his hand around them both, sliding his fist down and up and watchingtheir cocks together, squeezing a bead of precome out of them both. Dimitri moans raggedly, hands clutching at Claude’s shirt and back. 

Claude looks up from their pricks to watch Dimitri’s face: the flush high in his cheeks, his eye dilated to a ring of sky blue around a black pupil, the red, slick wetness of his mouth. There’s a scar just below his lower lip where it looks like he bit all the way through once, or more than once, and Claude leans down to kiss him, to suck his lip into his mouth before Dimitri returns the kiss, hungry and messy with spit. 

“Claude,” he says, as though he’s savoring the name. “ _Claude_.” 

“Yeah,” Claude says, and winks. “That’s me.” He goes to touch Dimitri’s face, only to remember the vial in his hand. “Here, hang on--” he pulls his other hand away from their cocks, scooting back a little on Dimitri’s lap before pulling the cork out with his teeth. It’s not a big vial, but linseed oil isn’t exactly in low supply, and he pours out a generous handful before reaching behind himself and opening himself up. 

The slide’s easy; Claude likes this, likes fingering himself, likes getting fucked. He hasn’t had many partners in the last five years--one has to be careful with who one dallies with when one is a prominent leader of a country, and he hasn’t had any sort of fling for nearly a year, knowing where he was going and carefully cultivating distance between him and his social circle, secretly (and not-so-secretly, depending on the person) preparing them for him to be gone. But he’s good with his hands and so he slides a second finger in almost right away, making a soft sound in the back of his throat as he does. 

Dimitri’s watching him, eye wide. “Claude,” he says softly. “Claude, Goddess, you’re so--” He sucks in a breath. “So lovely,” he breathes. 

No one calls Claude _lovely_. Who calls anyone _lovely_? Who is Dimitri at all? Claude can’t _not_ kiss him, fingers sliding out of himself for a moment as he leans forward. Dimitri kisses him back, surprised, and Claude wraps his oil-slick hand around Dimitri’s, thinking of his pale, knobbly fingers. “Here,” he says, and slicks up Dimitri’s hand. “Come here, I’ll--” he slides two fingers back into himself. “Come on,” he says. “Put it in me, please.”

“Are you sure--” Dimitri starts, but must see the look on Claude’s face because he blushes harder, pressing his face into Claude’s throat like he can hide it, and presses in, his finger against Claude’s, longer and thicker. Dimitri has huge hands. 

“Yes, _fuck_ ,” Claude hisses, and rocks back. “Another, another,” and Dimitri obeys as Claude pulls his own fingers out. “Crook them--not that much, a little-- _fuck!_ ” Dimitri nearly jumps at the curse. “No, like that, yes, yeah, that’s good, _Dimitri--”_ and Dimitri lets out a little whine at the sound of his own name, trembling underneath him. Goddess. “Who calls you by name?” he murmurs, still rocking on Dimitri’s fingers. Dimitri shudders all over, shaking his head. “No one, right?”

Dimitri glances up at him, and smiles, just barely. “Not quite,” he says hoarsely. “The professor, and Mercedes. But no one else.” 

He should have figured. “No one else will cross that line, right? No one else thinks they can. _Dimitri_. You hardly ever hear your name anymore, do you?” Dimitri shuts his eye, shaking his head. “I’ll say it as many times as you want,” Claude promises, nearly bouncing on Dimitri’s hand. “Give me another finger, Dimitri.” Dimitri does. He’s beautiful and cracked and mending beneath Claude, and Claude can’t tear his eyes away from him. 

“Claude,” Dimitri says, hoarse and low. “Is that--do you--”

Claude reaches for Dimitri’s other hand and brings it to his cock, hard between them. “Do you think I don’t like this?” He says. “Look how hard I am for you.” 

“Claude,” Dimitri says again, and twists his wrist, stroking Claude’s cock carefully. “It’s good?”

“It’s good,” Claude agrees. 

“You look--” Dimitri shudders beneath him “You look so good, Claude, you’re so--” He curves his fingers inside Claude, exactly where Claude told him to, and Claude whines. His fingers are big, stretching Claude wide but not enough to burn. “You’re glowing,” Dimitri says. “The firelight--and you--you have a halo.” He takes his hand from Claude’s cock to reach up to touch Claude’s hair, and it’s Claude’s turn to shiver, strung between Dimitri’s words and hands. Dimitri likes being praised, likes being told he’s doing well, but Claude’s not any different. He’s a vain creature, and Dimitri has always been distressingly sincere and distressingly generous with his praise. “You--oh.” The head of Claude’s cock is wet, drooling with precome as Dimitri uses his fingers exactly right. He’s a quick learner. He drops his hand back down to Claude’s cock and rubs his thumb, and then his forefinger, around the head, the precome coming away stringy on his fingers. “Oh, Goddess, _Claude_ \--”

Claude pulls himself off Dimitri’s fingers and finds the oil vial, dumping the last of it in his hands. “Yes,” he says. “Come on, Dimitri--” He wraps his fingers around Dimitri’s cock, slicking it up. He’s big, but Claude’s slick and loose and ready for him. “Fuck me, come on.” 

Dimitri wraps his own hand around the base of his cock to hold it in place and Claude does the delicate work of working the head into himself, eyelids fluttering as he does. The stretch is _perfect_ and he keens when Dimitri’s cockhead pops in, sighing as he slides down until he can open his eyes again and watch Dimitri’s face as he bottoms out, hips against Dimitri’s lap. “How’s that?” he breathes, not quite managing to smirk at Dimitri’s parted mouth, his wide eye.

“It’s-- _G-goddess_ , Claude,” he manages, and his hands come to Claude’s hips, gripping him. If he didn’t leave bruises before, he will now, and Claude relishes the feeling of Dimitri holding him so fast, of Dimitri not worrying about his strength so much. “Is it always--so--”

“It’s good, right?” Claude says, and lifts his hips a little before sliding back down. Dimitri gasps. “It feels good--you feel good, Dimitri.” He moves again, pulling out halfway before sinking down, picking up a rhythm. “You can--” his legs are shaking from the pleasure of it, and he has a feeling his stamina won’t last, not when Dimitri’s cock is so fat inside him, pressing on all the places Claude likes to be touched. “You can h-help.” 

Dimitri’s hands tighten, and Claude moans, head falling back. “Yes,” he hisses, and Dimitri helps him up before pulling him down, picking up Claude’s rhythm. “ _Yes_ , like that-- _fuck_.” 

Dimitri holds him as Claude fucks himself steadily on Dimitri’s cock, lifting him only a little at first, as though gauging his own strength, but then more and more, until he’s practically slamming Claude back down onto him, their bodies coming together with a light slap of skin. Claude pulls his head up to look at Dimitri, to watch him, and then lets it fall forward to watch the way his cock bobs between them, rubbing against Dimitri’s shirt and stomach. A drop of sweat lands on Dimitri’s shirt, dampening the fabric. Claude feels like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs. 

Dimitri’s hair falls in his face, hiding the blue of his eye, and Claude smoothes it back, hand shaking. Dimitri’s hand reaches up to touch his face in return, and Claude reaches for it without thinking, pressing crooked fingers to his lips. Dimitri’s eye widens, his mouth parting, and Claude sucks the tip of his index finger into his mouth, watching Dimitri. 

Dimitri’s hand trembles in his mouth, in his grasp. Claude slides his mouth down, teeth grazing the knuckle, and then takes another finger in, tonguing them. 

“Claude,” Dimitri breathes. “Oh, C-claude-- that’s--” 

Claude pulls his mouth off. “Sensitive?” he says against Dimitri’s fingers, and Dimitri’s head bobs as he swallows before Claude takes them into his mouth again, as though he’s sucking Dimitri’s cock. No one has probably touched Dimitri’s hands in a decade, he thinks, and licks between them, tasting a little sweat but mostly clean skin. He lets himself lave messy, open-mouthed kisses across the creases of his knuckles and the calluses of the underside of each finger until he’s drooling and then ducks down to press a sloppy kiss to Dimitri’s palm before swallowing Dimitri’s fingers again, feeling Dimitri’s cock jump inside him. 

Dimitri’s mouth is open, his breath coming out of him in little whines, unable to look away from Claude’s face. His gaze darts from Claude’s eyes to his mouth and back again, and Claude moans around the fingers in his mouth when Dimitri’s other hand tightens on his hip, hard enough to bruise. 

“Please,” he says, when Claude pulls away with a slurp to drool on Dimitri’s knuckles before kissing them. “Please, Claude, can I kiss you?”

Claude nods and ducks down so Dimitri can pull him in. “Still so polit--” He’s cut off by Dimitri’s mouth on his, open-mouthed and hungry, tinged with desperation, his fingers still caught in Claude’s mouth before he fists his spit-wet hand in Claude’s hair. His fingers are rough but even frantic, his mouth is gentle, and he stops moving to kiss Claude thorough and clumsy and slick. His other arm closes around Claude’s waist, his cock slipping out of Claude as he draws him close. Claude whines but lets it happen, nipping at Dimitri’s lower lip. 

Dimitri rucks up Claude’s shirt so he’s touching bare skin, fingers brushing against a scar from an arrow that grazed his side. When Claude pulls away, a strand of saliva stretches between them until Dimitri breathes, “You’re so warm.” Claude’s hands are fisted in Dimitri’s hair, holding tight enough to hurt, but Dimitri doesn’t seem bothered. Claude can feel the heat of Dimitri’s body even through his shirt. The hand in Claude’s hair comes to touch his left pectoral. “I can feel your heart beating, Claude,” he says, in awe. 

Claude’s heart is _pounding_. “Yeah,” he jokes breathlessly. “I’m alive.” 

Dimitri shudders, eye meeting Claude’s. “ _Claude_ ,” he says, with even more feeling, and Claude sits back, reaching for Dimitri’s cock to slide back onto him. Dimitri moans, head dropping back, and Claude begins to move again before Dimitri pulls him close, careful this time to not let his cock slide out of Claude. He grinds up into Claude, prick barely sliding out of him before he rocks back in. 

“Is--” Dimitri’s hands tighten around his back, pulling them closer together. “Is this e-enough? For you?” 

It’s not the same rhythm they’d found before; this is a rocking grind that isn’t as stimulating for Claude, but they’re pressed together, and his cock is trapped between them. With each roll of their bodies, it slides against the bare, slick skin revealed by Dimitri’s rucked-up shirt, the head catching on a fold of cloth, already wet with his own precome. He smoothes back Dimitri’s hair, and pulls, almost gently, so his hazy eye snaps back to Claude. “It’s enough for me,” he says, and Dimitri-- _sighs_ , almost, as though he was worried. “Is it--”

Dimitri pulls them still closer, tucking his face into Claude’s neck. “I don’t want to stop touching you,” he says, and Claude has to think about his grandfather’s grave to keep from both coming and confessing adoration for a man he hasn’t seen in five years. “I’m-- _Claude_.” He’s shivering in Claude’s arms. “You feel good. Touching you--feels good.”

That’s not an answer, but Claude’s satisfied. He can make this work, and rocks his hips with a little more intent, sinuous, clenching down as he does. Dimitri’s fingernails sink into his back and his moan is muffled in Claude’s Claude’s throat, mouth open against it. He picks up Claude’s rhythm quickly, and Claude gasps when the angle changes. “That’s it,” he says breathlessly. “Yeah, that’s good, come on--”

“Claude,” Dimitri says desperately, pulling back to look at him. Even like this Claude’s only a handspan or so taller than him, and it’s easy to sink down enough to kiss his open, wet mouth, catching Dimitri’s moan. Dimitri’s hips stutter, gasping into Claude’s mouth more than kissing him back, and then he squeezes his eye shut and comes inside Claude, pulling away to bite Claude’s shoulder _hard_ before he’s done. 

Claude’s barely wormed a hand between them to grab his own cock when Dimitri’s teeth close over the muscle of his shoulder, and he hardly needs to do more than thumb the head before he’s coming all over Dimitri’s stomach and shirt. 

_I would offer you a crown of white flowers,_ Claude does not say. _I would bind our hands together with Saint Cetheleann’s garland. I would marry you at Fodlan’s Locket in the spring._ They are foolish thoughts, the thoughts of a giddy boy with a crush returned from the dead after five years warm in his arms. Premature, silly thoughts that don’t even begin to approach reality. They’re not thoughts Claude can afford to entertain, let alone say aloud. 

But Dimitri would look beautiful with flowers in his hair. 

For long moments, they sit slumped together, panting, and then Dimitri falls back against the chair, dragging a hand over his eye. “I--I can’t believe I--Claude, I apologize for being so forward.” 

“If anyone was forward, it was me,” Claude says. He is reeling a little himself from how quickly it escalated, how fast they went from talking of the war to fucking like lovers, but Claude has no regrets. It feels fitting in a way, even if it was a remarkably unwise idea. It hadn’t been smart, but it had been worth it. “If you’re expecting me to apologize, I won’t.” 

Dimitri’s hand is still on his face, but he smiles underneath it. “I wouldn’t expect such a thing from you,” he says. 

“So why do you expect it of yourself?” It’s not a trick question, really--Claude’s interested in what makes Dimitri different from himself, or what Dimitri believes is different between them, if anything. Well. It is a little bit of a trick question, but only partially. 

Dimitri’s drops his hand to blink at Claude. “Because--” His brow furrows. “We’re different people, Claude. I’m not--” He huffs, face crinkling in a sad small smile. “Hm. You may have a point.”

Claude smiles. “I’m not a fool.” 

“I would never assume you were,” Dimitri says seriously.

“Then we’re in accord.” His smile widens to a grin, and he stretches up on Dimitri’s lap, smirking when Dimitri’s gaze follows the movement of his torso, before sliding off Dimitri’s lap and reaching for his trousers. 

Like five years ago, Claude dresses, because Dimitri’s still mostly clothed and it feels weird to be naked. But Dimitri’s the one to offer up his surcoat to wipe down his front and between their legs, and when Claude has yanked on his breeches, though none of the filmy layers he prefers to wear over them, Dimitri tugs Claude back into the oversized chair, arms going around him again, holding him tightly. Claude hugs him back. He’s not desperate for touch the way Dimitri seems to be, but he appreciates it; it’s rare, as elite nobility, to be touched with any sort of firmness, relegated to Claude’s few dalliances and the valet who helps him dress. Propriety means they’re rarely touched. Nobility in Almyra are not dissimilar, and it can’t be healthy. They touched each other in school, and during the war in the field, but the rules were different there. 

At school, Mercedes, who hated titles more than any other student Claude knew, could call any noble by their given name without being shunned or judged or punished for disrespect. There, students could sit together in the library sharing a book, chairs shoved next to each other, pressed together all along one side, and no one would accuse anyone of impropriety. 

At war, quarters were close. Affection was a way to create bonds. People turned to it after battles and skirmishes. It prevented battle sickness. In winter campaigns, closeness kept people warm. No one blinked at Leonie’s arm around Claude’s shoulders after Gronder while he shook at what they’d all become. No one frowned when Ignatz and Hilda sat close together too near the fire, foreheads pressed together as they pored over fashion designs they drew during quiet periods, imagining a world where fashion would matter again, and no one blinked when they turned to each other for more physical comfort. No one shrugged at Lysithea hugging Raphael around his waist when he woke up screaming and stumbled out of his tent in a nightmare haze, and then the two of them curling up against a tentpole, Lysithea in Raphael’s lap while she read whatever book she had brought with her on this campaign until he fell back asleep. 

In a non-Academy, non-war world, none of that was allowed, especially for nobility and between nobles and commoners. Goddess forbid Claude did anything more than bow over Lorenz’ hand, let alone pull him in for a hug. But even at school Claude and the former Golden Deer were different than Dimitri’s Faerghan crowd, where Dimitri was held at a distance, surrounded by the Blue Lions but never held too close to them, like a fragile and expensive vase. Dimitri rarely sat close to anyone, not even crammed on the benches in the dining hall. Claude’s intelligence suggested that before Gronder, he didn’t even travel with the army, but alongside it, moving through the woods next to the road rather than with the convoy. He didn’t get the comfort from it. Not everyone liked being touched, Claude knew, but the way Dimitri holds him suggests he does. 

“Claude?” Dimitri whispers. “Did you fall asleep?”

“Mm, no,” Claude says. “Just thinking.”

“May I ask you a question?” 

“You just did, but you can ask another,” Claude says, and winks up at him. 

Dimitri sighs, and Claude smiles. He’s perversely glad that he can rile Dimitri up the same way he always has. 

“Did you ever think about...then? About that night in the library?”

All the time, but Claude still has some pride. “Sometimes,” he says. 

“I didn’t…” Dimitri trails off. “No one touched me. Before but especially after. I didn’t _want_ that. So I didn’t...I dreamed about it. Not sex, really. Just...being touched. I hated it. I wanted to forget it.” 

Dimitri: holding him so tightly they could barely move, mouth open on his throat like he could breathe Claude in. “What changed?”

Dimitri sighs. “Rodrigue, when he died--oh, he was--”

“Felix’s father. I _do_ have a functional intelligence network, Dimitri.”

Dimitri huffs. “My apologies, Claude, you are correct. He touched my face. And then the professor took my hand. And I remembered how it felt. How good it could be to...to feel. I wanted it.” He pauses. “I’m sure your spies said I came out of some feral state of bloodlust, or some such.”

“Something like that was implied, yes.”

“It isn’t--it wasn’t--it’s not quite so simple. And it wasn’t just because someone touched me. But after that...then I began to stop being angry when I thought about it. About how I wanted...to be touched. Held.”

Claude pushes himself up on Dimitri’s chest to look at him. “Why are you telling me this?” he says. “You’ve never been forthcoming about yourself.”

“Who are you going to tell, Claude? You love having secrets.” 

Claude laughs out loud, surprised and delighted. The laughter makes Dimitri smile back at him, but there’s still something sad in his face. He bundles Claude in closer to him, and breathes in his hair, which probably still smells like banquet, wine and cooked meat and the roaring fireplace, and can’t be especially pleasant. He doesn’t say anything, though, just tucks Claude’s head in the crook of his shoulder, surprisingly determined to cling to him. 

“I do love a good secret,” Claude says. “I love keeping a secret. Even the ones that I can’t tell anyone I _have_ are fun to keep. I assume that ‘the King of Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance needs a hug’ is one of those.” 

“I don’t _need_ \--” 

“You really, really do,” Claude says, and presses a kiss to Dimitri’s bumpy collarbone. “You have friends who would oblige you, too, if you asked. Teach doesn’t give a damn. Sylvain’s worried more about your propriety than his own. Mercedes would do it in a heartbeat. Felix--maybe don’t ask Felix.” 

Dimitri’s snort turns into something that Claude can only call a _giggle,_ his chest and shoulders shaking, and Claude smiles into his shirt, a little smug. He hasn’t heard that in five years. 

“No,” Dimitri says. “I wouldn’t dream of that. I couldn’t presume--”

“They’re not just your subjects, Dimitri,” Claude says. “They are your _friends_. And if you were to ask something of them now, they would jump to do it, because you keep that boundary as strictly as any of them. They know you won’t demand things of them as their king.”

Dimitri’s head falls back against the chair back, good eye turned away from Claude. “I--” He takes a breath. “I know that,” he says. “Dedue and I--we spoke--and--” He shakes his head, the smile on his face faint but genuine. Relieved, calmed, as if remembering the moment a great weight was lifted from him. “We both needed it.” He still doesn’t look at Claude, staring out into the middle distance next to the chair, his face hidden from Claude’s view. His jaw works. 

“What’s stopping you?” Claude says. “From asking such a thing from those close enough to you to know the line between subject and friend is one that they can cross?” 

Dimitri mumbles something Claude can’t hear, that might not be for his ears. His hands tighten on Claude’s back before he forcibly lets them go. He sucks in a huge breath, and lets it out, shaky and a little wet. 

“Dimitri,” Claude says. 

“This was a bad idea,” Dimitri says quietly. Claude can see him swallow, but can’t see his expression. “You are leaving for some secret task in some far-away place and I…” _I’m the king of two countries now. I have to go to Enbarr. I have responsibilities here._ Dimitri sighs, the sound much older than any twenty-three year old should make, and says none of those things. “I do not know who I am without the war, without my ghosts and sorrows and anguish and birthright. And it’s not as though there is nothing left. There was nothing else there to begin with. Behind the Tempest King, there is little more than an empty ruin.”

Well, _shit._

Claude sits up in the chair, half on Dimitri’s lap. Dimitri isn’t looking at him. There’s the fresh streak of a tear that has already slid into his hairline on his temple.

“I’m the Crown Prince of Almyra,” Claude says, before he can talk himself out of it. “That’s where I’m going.” Dimitri’s eye slides to Claude. “It was funny if I kept it a secret but you’re wily, your Kingliness. I can’t keep my secrets from you if you’re offering yours up for free.” 

A smile flickers across Dimitri’s face. “You’re so transactional,” he says, and blinks. “The _Crown Prince of Almyra?_ ”

“Yes,” Claude says, without any adornment. “My mother married the king of Almyra, my father. I...it’s a long story, but I have goals. Plans.” He lifts an eyebrow at Dimitri, a half-smile. “ _Schemes._ And they’re easier to enact as King of Almyra than as the Duke of Riegan.” 

Dimitri wets his lips. “Schemes…?”

 _I do not know who I am_ , Claude hears, and who can he tell his schemes to if not the one person who must approve them in the end? “A peace treaty,” he says. “An alliance. Opening the Locket.” Ending the press-ganging of war orphans into Almyran military service. Reparations paid to prisoners of war enslaved or indentured to eastern Leicester nobles. Claude’s dreams are as big as the sum of their two lands. 

“Oh,” Dimitri says. “This is a lot to take in, Claude.”

So Claude won’t tell Dimitri that even in Derdriu, the heart of the Leicester Alliance, there’s been another name going around for Dimitri, one that has far more footing than “Tempest King” ever did. _The_ _Savior King of Faerghus._ Of all Fódlan, eventually. He won’t tell him that he’s also Khalid yet, that he doesn’t know where--or if--Khalid ends and Claude begins. This is a secret big enough to trade for Dimitri’s confession. It’s a secret so big Claude couldn’t even act like

he knew it and lord it over anyone. He won’t tell Dimitri all the other things he wants to tell him, the secrets and the foolish, absurd dreams and the gossip that paints Dimitri as a hero even in the Alliance. 

“I won’t overwhelm you with the rest, then,” Claude says.

“You already have,” Dimitri replies. He glances up at the ceiling, clearly putting things together. “Truly? It makes sense, with how vague you were in school, and what and how much you knew. But--truly?”

“Would I tease you?” Dimitri looks at him, eyebrows disappearing into his messy bangs. “Point taken. I promise I’m not this time, though.” He reaches out to brush his thumb over the tear streak still on Dimitri’s temple. “I wouldn’t tease you now. Not like this. I couldn’t be so cruel.”

“You want an alliance,” Dimitri says. “With _Fódlan_?”

“I admit it’s not necessarily a strategically useful alliance, though I think I can make it one,” Claude says. “But I’m Fódlandy and Almyran both. I want families like mine to be accepted. I want children like me to be raised in a world where they can feel like they can be both.” He winks at Dimitri. “I want Fódlan to end its isolationism and seek peace, and believe stretching out _my_ hand will help. And I also want to wear an Ordelian riding coat with Almyran embroidery.” Dimitri bites his lip to hide his smile. “My goals aren’t totally aligned with what is best for Almyra politically, but being King of Almyra is the best way to effect the change I want to make.” 

Dimitri’s smile is wan. “Claude,” he says. “Or should I say Your Princeliness?” 

Claude laughs. “This is why I couldn’t tell you!” he teases. “You’d use it against me!” 

Dimitri doesn’t take the out. “These secrets aren’t the same,” he says. “You’ve given me a much heavier burden than I’ve given you. Everyone knows the King of Faerghus is a battle-sick madman.” 

Claude shifts so he’s straddling Dimitri again, so he can look him square in the face, so he can cup his face in his hands. “On the contrary,” he says. “You’ve given me a heavy burden, and I take it willingly. Have you said that to anyone before me, Dimitri?” Dimitri’s eye darts to one side, and Claude thumbs another tear-track he’d missed before. “Not to Dedue, and not to Teach, and not to anyone else who fights for you--and they fight for you not because you’re they’re king, but because you are their beloved friend. This was a truth you’d never spoken before. That’s a heavy weight, and I take it willingly. In turn, while you are not the only person to know my secret, but you are the one most likely to use it against me. I gave it to you because I _trust_ you. I gave you Failnaught for the same reason, Dimitri.” 

“Claude,” Dimitri says hoarsely. 

“Trust _me_ , Dimitri,” Claude says. “I trust you because I know you are kind and honorable and loyal to a fault. Trust me because I am both transactional and wily, and I am telling you something because you are owed it. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” 

Dimitri reaches up to touch Claude’s face with his bare hand. There are still calluses on it, but it’s clean and bone-white, pale even compared to Dimitri’s Faerghan-pale skin. Dimitri bared his scarred, secret hands to him, and Claude has bared his own truth back. “I won’t tell a soul,” he whispers. “I should, obviously. You know that. My spymaster--though it’s Yuri Leclerc, and he likes you--the professor….But you’ve offered it to me. Not to the King of Faerghus.”

“King of Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance,” Claude says. 

Dimitri’s mouth curls. “If you insist,” he says. 

“I do,” Claude says. 

“It does--complicate things. It complicates everything. When we meet for parley, we will have--” Dimitri blushes. “Treating, and summits, and trade agreements--all of that knowing what’s happened here.” 

“I don’t regret it,” Claude says. “I could never regret being with you. Not the first time, and not this time, either.” 

Dimitri’s laugh has no humor in it. “As you said, we’re still young, no matter how we feel.” 

“I know myself,” Claude says. “I won’t regret you.” He takes Dimitri’s hand, kisses his bare, rough palm. The lines on it are twisted, even the palm of his hand scarred. “So what if it was a bad idea?” he says. “I told you, we deserve to be young. That means making shitty mistakes as much as it means everything else, right? It’s not like we’ll never see each other again.” 

“The next time we’ll see each other it won’t be the same,” Dimitri says. “It still won’t matter.”

“No, it won’t be the same,” Claude says. “But you and I--we’ll be equals. Fighting for the same goals. Right?”

“I--I hadn’t even considered Almyra yet, other than to hope they don’t invade now while Fódlan is weakened and unstable. But I assume that’s not the plan.” Dimitri’s mouth quirks, and Claude grins at him. “But once things are more settled, I--a treaty would be welcomed. I find I’m tired of war. That we’re all tired of it. They sent us to school even in peacetime to play war games against each other, dividing us by country. They fight wars for our crests and our Relics. When we’re not fighting wars, or sending commoners to fight wars for us, we’re talking about war. And it’s total war. Whole nations are slaughtered for misplaced revenge. The land is burned, the civilians starve or are murdered. Soldiers on both sides harass young women and men, take civilian food without asking. Children like Cyril are press-ganged into becoming child soldiers, and many end up as indentured servants with a contract to some lord they can never fulfill. Sadistic people with power like Cornelia Arnim are put in charge just because they have power. These aren’t sacrifices for a more just world. They’re just mindless deaths. They don’t mean anything. I’m _tired_ of wars, Claude, and I would be happy to treat with you if we can prevent more of them because of it.” He looks at Claude through his lashes. “With Almyra, of course, but selfishly--with you.” 

“It surprises me to hear you say it,” Claude says, honestly. “You’re a Faerghan.”

“I am,” Dimitri says. “There was a sword in my hand as soon as I could walk, and a lance not much later. But maybe that isn’t how children should be raised. Did it serve us? Did the war serve us at all? Did a school that only taught us to fight serve us?”

“What if the Officer’s Academy was about negotiating peace rather than waging war?” Claude replies.

“ _Yes,_ ” Dimitri says, squeezing Claude’s hand. “What if it were? It would never have been, not with how we were raised. But what if that’s what the children of Fodlan were taught? Would we all be here now?” He shakes his head. “Perhaps I--perhaps I would still be here. There is something wrong with me, Claude. I’m--I’m ill. Death-sick. But would everyone else?” 

“If everyone else was negotiating peace, and you were still death-sick,” Claude says, “We would take you with us.” Dimitri’s eye goes wide as he looks at Claude. “Your Lions wouldn’t let you fall behind. I wouldn’t either, and Teach most of all. I suspect they’ve already dragged you out of the mire. It would just be a little further.” He looks down at Dimitri. “But know this: if we were taught to negotiate peace instead of wage war, and you, or Edelgard, or _any_ of us were still here instead, I would drag you or them to the treaty table myself. I wouldn’t let you fall behind. I wouldn’t--” He smiles thinly. “Playing hypotheticals gets us nowhere, Dimitri.” 

“That one did,” DImitri says. “You’re a good man, Claude.” 

Claude swallows at the open sincerity in Dimitri’s face. “I--” he starts, and can’t find a snappy retort. Can feel the blush start in his neck and creep up his face. “Dimitri,” he says helplessly. 

“It will be an honor to treat with you, and with the King of Almyra,” Dimitri says. “You’re honorable and loyal. It’s an honor to be your--your friend.” 

There’s a lump in Claude’s throat. “Dimitri,” he says again, “Thank you.” He presses their foreheads together. 

“Thank you, also,” Dimitri whispers, and wraps his arms around Claude. 

\--

It’s only a few hours later when Claude departs Derdriu with his wyvern and a pack wyvern loaded with his belongings, along with Judith and the discreet flying battalion she’s enlisted for the task of transporting him to the Locket. He didn't sleep, though he should have, too worried and already homesick while he’s still here. It feels foolish to have been homesick when he arrived seven years ago, and to leave just as homesick. He lay in bed after leaving the library with a physical ache in his chest, and then he got up and finished his final packing, lingering long over a lonely early breakfast. 

Claude says goodbye to his household and his heir--a distant cousin who has no crest but enough stout courage to manage handling the Table, the unification, and the transition from wartime to peacetime; to the former Golden Deer still in town: Marianne, Lorenz, and Ignatz; to Hilda, who is barely awake and pretending she isn’t crying; and then to Dimitri and Byleth, who got up to bid him farewell. 

“You’ll see me again,” he says. “Don’t worry.” 

“I will,” Byleth says, as blandly as they would have said _I won’t, then_ back in school. They clean their spectacles, sighing. “It’s inescapable now, unfortunately.” 

“And what about you, your Kingliness?” Claude says, sketching a bow. “Will you worry?”

“It’s part of a king’s job to worry about everything, or so I’ve been led to believe,” Dimitri says solemnly, but the corners of his lips turn up. “Godspeed, Claude. May the Goddess bless your travels.”

“She already has,” Claude says, and winks. “Until next time.”

Dimitri turns pink, but offers him a more formal bow in return. They’re in a quiet courtyard, now almost empty but for Hilda and Judith, who know. Byleth certainly wouldn’t recognize the flourish--and if they did, they wouldn’t care--but Claude does. It’s not a bow a king offers anyone but another king, and only then one worthy of respect. A bow a king offers someone with whom they might be in a peacetime alliance. When he rises, he bestows upon Claude one of his sweet, small smiles. “Until then,” Dimitri says quietly, and Claude leaves Derdriu with warmth in his hollow chest.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: The mental health issues tag refers to Dimitri's brainworms as a whole, and includes a couple references to symptoms of disorganized thinking and hallucinations.
> 
> Other notes:  
> -IIRC, Claude actually says he's dissolving Riegan but that seems unrealistic so here I changed it.
> 
> -Claude remains a slightly unreliable narrator, but this time it's more about himself than misinterpreting Dimitri.
> 
> -"But nebs!" you say. "Chair and a halves are not medieval!" Look at Fire Emblem and look at this fic my dudes and tell me intsys or I give a single shit
> 
> -I very much like Edelgard, but as with all the house leaders she makes different choices in different routes and the ones she makes in AM are, imo, not great, Bob! anyway cornelia arnim should not have been anywhere near an empire-approved leadership position under any circumstances
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! I can be found most often [@coaIsack](http://twitter.com/coaisack) on twitter; if you want to follow or support me in other ways, I have a [carrd](http://nebulia.carrd.co)!


End file.
